


Starving

by AvaBlook (AvaTaggart), AvaTaggart



Category: Gravity Falls, Monsterfalls AU
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gen, Gore, Violence, Zombies, autocannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4706912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaTaggart/pseuds/AvaBlook, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaTaggart/pseuds/AvaTaggart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After falling into a mysterious stream in the woods, Robbie finds himself different. And hungry. Really hungry. Monsterfalls AU, centered on Robbie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! In case you didn't see the tags, this fic gets more than a bit graphic with violence, gore, and so on. This chapter in particular has eye horror and the loss of an eye featured prominently. Proceed with caution.  
> This fic follows Robbie through the Monsterfalls AU of Gravity Falls, inspired by Tumblr user onestler's thoughts on it. I hope you'll enjoy it!

Robbie woke up hungry.

Of course, he was a few other things too - he was wet, cold, and (although he didn't know it yet) dead.

But mostly hungry.

The hunger - it was weird, like hands clawing at his stomach from the inside out, scraping at his insides with sharp nails, demanding that he eat. It was much stronger than anything he'd felt before. What was weirder, though, was that he hadn't even been that hungry, last he could remember. Hunger hadn't even entered his mind as he'd been trying to find his way back out of the woods that Dipper, _that god-awful relationship-destroying twerp_ , had led him into. (Okay, maybe he'd been following Dipper without the other boy's knowledge, but it was so he could get revenge for the merciless way the kid had torn Wendy away from him, so it was totally Dipper's fault and not his.)

But now? He was _starving_.

He stood up and finally noticed the water dripping from his hair, his clothes, his fingers and into the stream that burbled past his ankles. It took him a moment to realize.

He'd been in the stream.

 _No way that was good_.

What had even happened? He could remember tripping, hitting his head on a rock . . . his face must have somehow been propped up above the water but _man was that close_. He could have _died!_

(He had.)

Robbie quickly stepped out of the stream, which was creeping him out because _he almost died! Right there!_

He reached up a hand to brush some of his sopping wet hair a little farther back from his eyes, but he never did. Instead, once his hand came into view, Robbie froze.

His hand was blue.

 _His hand was fucking blue_.

Last he checked, his hand _was not blue_. But why would one hand be blue unless . . .

Robbie unfroze and lifted his other hand into view.

"Oh man," he whispered. His other hand was blue too.

Robbie began pulling at the sleeves of his sweatshirt, hiking them up over his wrists, over his elbows, trying to find the point where the blue paint or gloves or whatever was making his hands look blue stopped, but it wasn't there. _It wasn't there_. Instead, the blue continued seamlessly up his arms, disappearing into his sweatshirt.

He looked down at the few inches of skin on his legs, exposed between his shoes and jeans. That was blue too. Holy - _was all of him blue?_ _And how on earth does that even happen? How does a person turn blue?_

He leaned over the stream a little, to see if his face was blue too, but the rippling water distorted both shapes and colors, and he was _not_ eager to fall back in by trying too hard to see his reflection.

Okay, so his skin was blue. It wasn't a big deal. He just had to calm down and find his way out of the forest, and then he could find a way to get the blue off. It was probably just dye or something that someone had dumped into the water further upstream. That made sense, right? It's not like anyone ever checked the streams that ran through the woods to make sure no one was dumping chemicals, and some of the people in this town were crazy enough to try. He could probably just wash it off when he got home.

Of course, none of his clothing was looking more blue than usual, but he was wearing dark colors - those wouldn't show a little bit of dye, right?

He looked down at the stream. It _did_ look eerily blue.

He quickly looked away from the stream and at the forest. It wasn't familiar. Looked like he was still lost, but now he was more eager than ever to get home, so he picked a direction at random and just kept walking. The forest had to end somewhere, right?

The plants in the forest around the stream grew together so thickly that walking was difficult. Thorns tore at Robbie's new skinny jeans and _when he got out of here Dipper was going to pay because those jeans were_ not _cheap_.

But as the sun began to dip in the sky, Robbie became less worried about his jeans and more worried about finding his way back to Gravity Falls. He had no confidence in his ability to find his way back, or even camp out, in the dark if he needed to. He _knew_ there was no way he'd be able to find something to eat, and judging by the way his stomach was killing him, he _needed_ to eat, soon. And he'd been walking a while. He couldn't help worrying thathe was heading deeper into the forest and not out of it.

But just when he'd decided that he was not going to find the town before dark, the vegetation on the ground thinned, and he found himself on the outskirts of town, not far from the Mystery Shack. He'd picked up Wendy from the Shack enough times to know his way home from here. He considered heading into the Shack to buy some of their overpriced snacks and hopefully kill the hunger he was feeling, but the thought of Dipper, or worse, Wendy seeing him coated in head-to-toe blue dye he'd been stupid enough to get covered in was off-putting enough that he turned away from the Shack and onto the main road and began walking back towards town.

As Robbie walked along the road through the woods, a group of crows gathered and circled overheard, cawing and diving for the ground, pulling up short and ascending again. Robbie glanced at them, but didn't pay attention, didn't notice that they seemed to be following him. He was more focused on getting back home and eating and _holy crap he hadn't ever been this hungry in his life_.

So it seemed to come from out of nowhere when a crow swooped down from the sky, claws stretched out in front of it, cawing loudly. Robbie threw his arm up over his face in some instinctual attempt to shield himself, and the crow landed on his arm, claws digging into the cotton of his sweatshirt. After a moment spent silently freaking out because _there was a bird on his arm why was it there why did these things always happen to him?_ , Robbie slowly lowered his arm. The crow was still perched there, perfectly still. After a moment, it cocked its head to the side and shuffled up Robbie's arm an inch or so. It stared at him with glossy, pure-black eyes.

Robbie's lip twitched in the suggestion of a smile. The crow wasn't scary. It wasn't attacking him. It was almost tame.

The crow lunged, beak-first, for Robbie's left eye.

Robbie jerked his arm to throw the bird off, but it was airborne, circling, hovering, fixated on Robbie's eye, and _crows don't act like this what the hell was wrong with it?_

The crow kept circling, thrusting its beak through the spaces between Robbie's arms, which he'd thrown up again because he didn't know what the hell was going on but he was _not_ about to let some crow peck his face apart. He couldn't keep it up, though. His arms couldn't shield all of him, and the bird was persistent. Any hole between his arms, any misplaced limb, and the crow's beak was thrust at his face again.

Robbie was running now, flat-out sprinting for town, hoping to come across someone who could help. But there was a long way to run, and the crow was following him. It dove again and again, thrusting its beak at Robbie's face at every opportunity it got.

The crow's claws raked across Robbie's right arm, ripping through sweatshirt and skin alike, and left it oozing thick red blood.

Robbie jerked his arm out from its tightly controlled position instinctually, startled.

It was enough.

The crow's beak reached for him once more, and this time he couldn't do anything but watch as the crow's beak grabbed his left eye and roughly yanked it from the socket, quickly flying up towards a tree with it. The bird's beak pressed too hard against the delicate sphere and it broke, eyeball fluids spilling one way and Robbie's iris falling another. The crow didn't seem to notice, and continued carrying the membrane coating of Robbie's eyeball into the forest.

Robbie's hand reached for the socket where his left eyeball was a moment ago, expecting to find a fountain of blood at his fingertips, but his fingers stopped short of the skin. He braced himself for crippling pain that must just be taking a second to kick in, like it did with people in shock, and if anyone was in shock it was Robbie right now. But the pain didn't come, and Robbie stood there for who cares how many minutes waiting for it, for even a little twinge of pain, but there was none, he felt nothing except for the hunger, and _why the fuck didn't that hurt that had to hurt what is going on_.

After a while, with no pain from his face and no blood from his wound, Robbie pressed his hand to his face over the hollow where his eye used to be. The skin was dry, no blood. Not one drop.

_What the hell was wrong with him?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of self-mutilation/self-harm in this one at the end. No blood, but body horror.

As the shock began to wear off, Robbie realized that standing in the middle of the road to town wasn't the best idea.

He still needed to get home and get the dye off and eat, and now find out what was wrong with him that meant a crow ripped out his eyeball and he didn't even feel it.

Thankfully, his hair was already long and prone to falling in his face. He pushed it over where his left eye should have been so that no one would see him walking around with a gaping empty socket and continued walking to town, a bit faster now, in case that insane crow came for his other eye.

His stomach was still killing him, and he wondered if that was part of why he hadn't felt what the crow had done, that he was feeling so much pain from his stomach that he couldn't feel anything else. That made sense, right? Nervous system overload or something? That was a thing that happened, he was pretty sure. That was all it was. Once he ate, the pain would come.

As for the blood, well, he didn't really know. Maybe eye sockets didn't bleed a lot. It's not like he knew what the normal amount of blood for a ripped-out eye was.

Of course, there was always the chance that something stranger was going on. Gravity Falls was a weird town, there were tons of stories about supernatural things happening here, and he'd seen one of them (the haunted convenience store) proven with his own eyes. Maybe the lack of pain and blood were really signs of something bigger.

Maybe something had happened to him, changed him. Maybe he wasn't human anymore.

He refused to seriously consider it, but the idea kept creeping into his mind.

He took back roads to get home, hoping to fix the more pressing problems before anyone saw him. Of course, in Gravity Falls, almost every road was a back road, but he took the ones people hardly ever used.

Thankfully, no one seemed to be out. He made it home without seeing anyone else.

At his house, the door was locked, and the car wasn't in the driveway. His parents were out, which was probably a good thing, because the fewer people who saw him like this, the better. He fumbled with his key in the lock for a moment, then pushed the front door open and went inside.

He headed straight for the kitchen. Tucked in one cabinet or another were all of the chips and candy he normally would have gone for, but for some reason none of those seemed very appealing right now. He was thinking of burgers, steak, bacon - meat. He pulled open the fridge door to check for any leftover meatloaf from the other night, but what caught his eye was the fresh package of ground beef, still wrapped in transparent plastic. The long, thin tubes of processed cow, raw muscle and fat that had been kept just-killed fresh, seemed like the most tasty thing in the fridge, and before he could think, Robbie was reaching for the package.

He jerked his hand back and slammed the fridge door shut. No. No way. There was _no way in hell_ that he was really considering eating the raw beef, even if the uncooked flesh seemed to be calling his name, even if it did smell really delicious . . .

He forced himself out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. Whatever chemical had dyed his skin blue must have been causing all these other weird things to happen. It must have been messing with his brain. He had to get it off, and then things would go back to normal.

He hoped.

He threw his clothes to the floor and switched the water on, full blast, the water pressure as high as the house's old pipes would allow.

(It was also turned as cold as it could go, but he didn't notice.)

He scoured his skin with soap, shampoo, even some weird body scrub his mom used, but nothing worked. His skin stayed blue. His eye still felt no pain. And he still found the idea of eating the raw beef appetizing instead of disgusting.

This was getting too weird. Everything that was happening was too weird. This couldn't be real, this had to be a dream or something, a hallucination.

_This wasn't human._

He shut the water off, toweled himself mostly dry, and pulled the same clothes (this probably wasn't real, and even if it was, not like they were really dirty, right?).

The rest of the house was empty, and dark, and creepy. By now the sun had set and Robbie was alone in a house full of shadows, which was not helping him calm down.

Something was wrong with him. Seriously wrong. Either he was in a coma and having the most vivid hallucination ever or for some reason he was experiencing all the stereotypical symptoms of being a zombie. But he couldn't be  - stuff like that wasn't real! Sure, the ghosts had been, but zombies - that was _different_! There was no way that he was a zombie! Zombies were _dead_ , and he was . . .

Robbie shoved two fingers on his right hand against his left wrist, the way they'd taught in Biology, worming them around to find the right vein or artery or whatever, hunting for a pulse.

He couldn't find one. All he could feel was the skin under his fingers, cold and impossibly still, and only barely could he feel that.

_No_.           

His hand darted to his neck, searching out a stronger vein, trying to find the subtle pulse under his fingers that would mean he was alive.

His neck was still, motionless. No pounding pulses of life under the surface.

_No_.

He stumbled back, smacked into the kitchen counter with his hip. He felt nothing.

_No_.

He lifted his right hand into view, looking for some explanation as to why he couldn't feel. The skin on his fingertips was loose, as if worked free from the bone by the pressure he'd put on them while trying to scrub the blue off of his skin. He pinched some of the skin on his ring finger and pulled it, expecting it to hold taut like it had his entire life. Instead, it began to pull free of his skeleton, giving Robbie an unprecedented view of his bone.

"No," he whispered, but the word barely made it out. He couldn't focus enough to speak because his mind was screaming in denial _no no no this isn't happening this can't be real_ but he knew it was. The world around him was far too solid to be a hallucination.

Robbie was a zombie.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of weird eye stuff is mentioned, and raw meat is eaten.

Too much.

It was too much.

Finding himself a zombie after getting his eye pecked out by a crow and waking up face-down in a stream - it was too much for him to handle. He couldn't stop his mind from racing over _how the hell did this happen and when_. He had been normal that morning, he was sure, and in the afternoon, and when he set out into the woods, and every second up until he fell into the stream. The stream - was that why he was a zombie? Maybe he really had drowned in the stream - _don't use the word died you couldn't have died you're still here_ \- and for some reason he came back.

Of course one part of his mind was still screaming _no it's not true you're still alive you're still alive_ , but that part shut up pretty quickly when Robbie realized he wasn't breathing.

The pain in his stomach grabbed his attention, and he bent forward in agony. If before it had felt like fingers were scratching at his stomach, well, now it felt like they were grabbing it, pulling it, trying to wrench it from whatever it was that stomachs were attached to.

Robbie stumbled to the fridge, yanked the door open, and grabbed the package of raw beef. To hell with his pride, there was no one to see him anyways, and even if there was, they could go to hell _he was starving._

He dropped into a sitting position on the floor, not even bothering to close the fridge behind him, fixated on the beef.

He ripped the thin sheet of plastic off of the Styrofoam tray of meat, and the smell of raw flesh hit his nose and _it was the most beautiful thing he had ever smelled_.

He held the tray with his left hand and sunk the fingers of his right into the meat, deforming the perfect little tubes and tearing off a squishy moist chunk of the pinkish goo. He hesitated for an instant, then shoved the meat into his mouth and _it tasted good_. He could tell it was dead, there was a taste of it in the meat and that brought the flavor down but the flesh tasted better than anything he had ever had. It was somehow sweet and savory at the same time, and something else too, and the hands in his stomach were reaching for it, trying to grab hold of as much as they could.

The beef squished against his fingers, compressing and deforming, and little crumbs of it were falling from his hand, back into the container or onto the floor but _he didn't care he was in heaven_.

He swallowed, and before all the meat had even left his mouth his hand was diving into the soft processed flesh again and grabbing another handful, shoving it in his mouth like the container was going to be snatched away any second and reaching for more. He couldn't get enough into himself and before he knew it, his fingernails were scraping against the white Styrofoam and all the meat was gone. His eyes darted to the few crumbs that had fallen to the floor, but he clenched his hands and closed his remaining eye and took a deep breath that did nothing but hey, he was used to doing it, and maybe the familiarity helped. He calmed down, and Robbie was himself again, all the way, no crazy hunger for the raw meat on the floor. It still smelled better than anything, but he was able to resist, scoop up the bits and throw them in the trash can.

He was left with the Styrofoam package, of course, and he considered just throwing that away too, but he didn't want anyone to know about this if he could help it, especially his parents, so he walked upstairs to his bedroom and stuffed it to the bottom of the garbage bag in there.

When he'd thrown away the container and washed the smell of raw meat off of his hands, he realized that the hunger had dulled. It was still there, still waiting, but weak, no worse than he'd had in the past, maybe even normal. He could ignore it.

After washing his hands, Robbie looked at himself in the bathroom mirror over the sink. His face was as blue as the rest of him. When he let his hair fall normally he could see the gaping empty socket where his left eye had been that morning. One more reminder of what he was now. Surprisingly, the part of his right eye that would normally have been white was a solid yellow. He hadn't even had a clue that had happened.

How would he explain this? The missing eye he could deal with - he still had an eye patch from his old Summerween costume, and he could cover the hole with his hair, but the blue skin, especially on his face, would be hard to hide, and the yellow in his eyes - if anyone made eye contact with him, they would see it.

He was a freak now, and anyone who saw him would know it.

He could hear a car rumbling up the driveway outside the house.

His parents were back.

No, this was too soon. He had no plan, no idea what to do - _they couldn't see him like this!_

Robbie dashed back to his room, slammed the door shut, and locked it. Better than nothing, he figured, and it would at least keep him out of sight for a while. A moment later, there was a key in the front door and his parents came in. He could hear their footsteps creaking across the wooden floor, their voices as they continued a conversation started outside, but he could _smell_ them, too. Not the scents associated with them, like his dad's soap or his mom's hairspray, but they themselves, their sweat and blood and muscle, pulsing and crackling with life.

And they smelled even better than the raw beef had.

"No way, I can't be - that can't be _them_ ," Robbie stuttered under his breath. It couldn't be his parents that smelled so - well, delicious. It had to be something else, anything else.

But he could smell them, could feel the hunger in his stomach reviving itself, growing again because he was so close to ~~prey~~ his parents. Everything in him screamed that he should open the door, walk into the living room, and eat them.

"Robbie?" his mom called.

He found that his hand was on the doorknob and pulled himself back, recoiling in horror.

"Yeah?" he called back, trying not to let the panic he was feeling escape into his voice.

"We rented a movie; will you come down to watch it with us?"

Of all times to make one of her attempts at getting him out of his room and back in the rest of the house, it had to be _now_?

"No, I'm, uh  - I'm actually really tired! I'm just going to go to sleep." His voice sounded pathetic, and the lie was weak. Please let her ignore it. Please let her forget about him.

“Alright,” his mother called up the stairs. He could hear the doubt in her voice, but she wouldn’t do anything about it. His parents were not confrontational people, _thank God_.

His body went slack with relief, but he knew this was only temporary. He could only stay in his room or out of sight for so long before they'd begin to wonder what he was hiding, and he had other people to see, too. Robbie V and the Tombstones was supposed to be practicing two days from now, and unless he could somehow convince all the others to come in costume for an ordinary practice and pass off his appearance as an elaborate new mix of paint and prosthetics, they would know something was wrong with him.

"Wendy," he murmured. There was no way he would get her back like this, with peeling blue flesh and a hunger for humans. Even if she got over the song, him being a zombie was most definitely a dealbreaker.

He might as well face it. His life was as good as ruined. He doubted this was the kind of thing to go away overnight, or go away at all. He was dead, or undead. And all because he fell in that stupid stream . . .

All because that _goddamn kid_ was in the woods, he reminded himself. What had Dipper even been doing out there, anyway? And why was it that all the weird stuff always happened around him; all the ghosts, or living video game characters, or magic streams or whatever were always connected to the kid.

He was starting to get a headache trying to think through all this. Everything was so _different_ now, irreversibly changed.

Robbie sighed and flopped onto his bed, staring up at the cracked paint on the ceiling. This morning he had woken up human. Tomorrow, he wouldn't be able to say the same.


	4. Chapter 4

Robbie found he couldn't sleep through the night.

The hunger woke him up at four seventeen in the morning, back at full strength, and it took everything in him to keep from crying out loud enough for his parents to hear. If they came running, burst into the room and found him like this - he didn't know what they would do.

Instead he clamped both hands against his stomach, trying to put pressure on it like it was a wound, hoping to press away the pain.

It didn't work.

Robbie considered going to the kitchen again, finding something that might quell his hunger for a little while at least, but now his parents were home. He'd have to walk past their bedroom to get to the kitchen, and what would happen if one of them saw him? What would they think if they found him as he was now, blue with one yellow eye and one empty socket, sitting on the kitchen floor eating raw meat? No, it wasn't worth it.

But if he stayed here any longer, his hunger might not be resistible, and something far worse than his parents' view of him might hang in the balance. Already, from the moment he'd woken up, the smell of his parents had crept into his awareness, calling to some part of him he hadn't had yesterday morning.

No, he couldn't stay here.

He walked over to his window and slid it open. The bug screen was long gone, removed for the last time several sneak-outs ago.

It wasn't the first time he'd been out at four in the morning, but usually pre-dawn excursions like this were made with a group of friends, some flashlights, and typically a car. Today he had nothing but the ever-growing hunger.

Was this what the rest of his life would be? Pain, agony, and never-ending hunger?

He had to get out of here.

He pulled out the thin rope ladder he used for getting in and out of the house from the second story and threw it out the window, scrambling out onto it as soon as he could. He could still smell his parents through the open window, so he reached up and pulled the window shut. That was better; the smell was muted, at least. But in its absence he could smell other things, as unfamiliar as the smell of his parents' lives had been, the beating hearts and pulsing blood of the animals outside. Squirrels, deer, a lone skunk were all overflowing with life, with the tangy-sweet scent of blood and flesh. It didn't smell quite as good as his parents had, but there was undoubtedly more of it, the smell of life pouring in from all around him, surrounding him. It overwhelmed his already hunger-weakened mind, and the hunger leapt to life inside him, reaching and straining towards the nearest life source, whatever it was - a mouse, an owl, a mosquito flying past - all were desirable, delicious.

Robbie recoiled with horror. No, he couldn't be thinking this way, couldn't consider eating the animals around him. The beef had been one thing. It was already dead, for starters. But compared to what was now around him, the beef seemed as attractive as stale chips; the kind of thing you would only eat if you were truly hungry.

 _No_. He needed to distract himself, get his mind on something else. He needed a goal.

_Get down the ladder. One more rung, one more rung, grass. What now?_

_Thompson's house_. He didn't have a reason for picking it, but it was a goal, a destination. Robbie set his mind to it, getting to Thompson's house, the directions and just putting one foot in front of the other alike. When he got there, he'd pick a new destination. He could make it through the night. No one was out and about to see him.

_And in the morning?_

He couldn't think that far ahead right now. He just had to make it through the night. He could work the rest out later.

Okay, Thompson's house. He needed to turn . . . right. Okay, he could do this. Just keep walking, Robbie. Okay, left at the street, ignore the stray cat, _just ignore the cat_ , okay, now left . . .

He set foot on the pavement, turned towards Thompson's house, and promptly blacked out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a gift to a friend, seiya234 on Tumblr (and possibly on here too).  
> Also, it has graphic violence, lots of blood, and eating a whole dead animal.

Robbie woke up for the second time that morning at a more reasonable hour (for him, anyway): ten-something. Or at least, that's what he figured by how high the sun was in the sky.

He was lying on the ground, and he couldn't really remember why. It came back slowly: leaving the house, walking towards Thompson's house, passing out. He must have fallen back onto the grass of his yard, though that wouldn't explain the trees filtering the sunlight from overhead, or why his fingers felt sticky, like they'd been coated in juice and left out to dry.

Thank God, the hunger was gone, or at least nearly gone; only a whisper of it remained, an 'I could eat' instead of an 'I've been without food in the savannah for a month'. Robbie actually smiled a bit at the absence of the pain. Maybe he'd broken it, maybe it was what he'd heard fasting was like: after a while, your body just gets used to the hunger and stops demanding food. He could still smell the animals around him, and they still smelled good, but they were no longer as tempting now that he wasn't in agony from hunger. Still smiling, Robbie sat up.

And immediately felt like puking.

Close by his right side was a dead raccoon, or what was left of one. It seemed like it had been ripped open, and bones and guts were strewn across the ground, soaked in blood. Its dead eyes were still open, its fur matted with its blood. Flies swarmed and buzzed around it, as hungry for it as Robbie wasn't.

Something had definitely eaten part of the thing. As many guts as there were, there weren't enough to entirely fill its skin. The raccoon's stomach seemed to have teeth marks on it, too: the ragged edges from where a bite had been torn out. The liquid from inside the stomach was spread across the ground too, but was easily overwhelmed by the blood.

What had done this? What could have, or would have? He'd never seen anything like this before, or even heard about it. Was this another crazy supernatural thing Dipper had brought about? And why hadn't it attacked him?

Robbie pushed himself up, off the ground. Whatever had caused this, he didn't want to be around when it came back. He made to pull up the hood of his hoodie - after all, it was daytime now, and the less people saw of him, the better. But again, he stopped when his hands came into sight. But this time, it wasn't because they were blue.

It was because they were red.

They were covered in blood, soaked in it. The blood had worked its way under his fingernails, dried into a sticky, disgusting mess. It was soaked into the sleeves of his hoodie, caked down his front. He was dripping with red.

He skittered backwards without thinking about it, trying to remove himself from the horror of it all, but of course his blood-drenched limbs came along. Still, he put some distance between himself and the raccoon, and that helped.

Had . . . had he done that? Killed the raccoon?

It would explain the blood, but how could he have done that and not remembered? He scoured his memory for any trace of the last six or so hours, but there was nothing, a void. It was like trying to remember what happened to your body while you were asleep.

What was he going to do? What could he do? There was no place he could go, covered in blood like this, not even home to wash the blood off.

He raised his hand into view again, and though he was prepared for it, it was still a bit shocking to see it drenched in blood like he’d dipped it into a vat of the stuff.

The blood was dry enough, a bit sticky but not still liquid, flaking off in little solid pieces near the edges. He could smell it, a bit faint but salty and tangy and incredibly delicious, a bit like barbeque sauce but better somehow.

Robbie’s mind was at war with itself, half crying out in disgust at the blood caked up his arm, and the dead raccoon nearby, but the other half crying out louder for him to eat it, devour it, and find even more.

Well, the raccoon was already dead, right? The blood had already been spilled. Ignoring it, washing it off, would just be wasting it . . .

Numbly, Robbie lifted his hand to his mouth and licked his fingers.

The blood tasted good.

Robbie cried a little, silently, but he kept eating it. He didn’t want this, didn’t want to do this, but if he would black out and kill things if he starved himself, then he had to eat. He didn’t want to risk hurting his parents, or his friends, or _Wendy_.

He licked the blood from his hands in silence. He looked over to the dead raccoon, with flies covering its fur and buzzing at its innards, and he _knew_ he should eat it, because he sure as hell didn’t want to go through this again and the more he ate the longer it would be until the hunger was back, but he couldn’t. It was too much of a stretch for him to see the raccoon as food, no matter how tempting the smell of it was.

_What now?_

He was a zombie. He was dead. He was dangerous.

He couldn’t be seen like this. He couldn’t trust himself around other people like this.

He was a monster.

(He wasn’t the only one, or at least, he wouldn’t be for long.)

He didn’t want to be this way. He didn’t want to kill things and eat them. He didn’t want to constantly be thinking of his friends, his family, everyone he cared about as food, as delicious.

But what could he do? Zombies couldn’t die, as far as he knew, and they certainly couldn’t come back to life.

So this was it. This would be his eternity.

It was a sobering, heavy thought. His arms wrapped around his knees instinctually and he pulled himself into a ball, trying to pull himself into a shape so small he would disappear. If he didn’t exist, he wouldn’t have to worry about this, and no one else would, either.

He needed to protect the people he loved, to find a way to keep from hurting them. They wouldn’t be safe with him around.

Robbie slowly climbed to his feet. Numbly, he looked around for something that would give him an idea of where he was and spotted a patch where the trees dispersed a few dozen yards away. He stumbled his way towards it, probably looking every bit the stereotypical zombie but too numb and empty to care.

He walked out into someone’s backyard on the edge of town. Thankfully, no one seemed to be home.

He walked out from behind the house and onto the street. There were neon flyers all over the street, stapled to lamp posts and stuffed into mailboxes. He grabbed one blowing down the road and skimmed it. Apparently the Mystery Shack was throwing another event/party thing, this one free with the purchase of their new bottled spring water.

He threw the paper back to the ground, where it continued skittering along the pavement. At least with an event like this going on, there wouldn’t be many people around to see him.

Robbie trudged his way home and climbed his way up the rope ladder. It would have been easier to go in through the front door, but the door to his room was still locked, so he wouldn’t have been able to get in anyway.

He pulled himself through the window frame and crashed to the floor. He couldn’t really feel it, and he didn’t hear anything break, so it didn’t really matter. Better that he didn’t hurt. Better that he was as numb as possible for what he was going to do next.

Robbie grabbed a pocket knife off his desk and sawed through the ends of the rope ladder that were inside the room. The rope ladder fell to the ground outside with a heavy and final-sounding clump.

Before he could begin to doubt himself, Robbie closed his window and locked it. Then he pulled on the lock until it broke off in his hands, locking the window shut permanently.

He dropped the broken twist of metal to the floor and headed for the door. His hand grabbed the locked doorknob, tight, so tight that the metal began to crumple under his fingers.

This was for the best.

Robbie bent the doorknob off at its base, leaving a twisted and useless metal stub on the door and a cold lump of cheap metal in his hand.

It was done. He couldn’t get out. He wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ , hurt anyone or anything ever again.

Everyone was safe from him.

Except himself.


End file.
